Living with Lamenting and Longing: Psalms of Lament
It’s not natural to enjoy suffering. We all, as humans, want to be exempt from it. Yet, ironically, no one is. That’s why endurance is such a key word for the Christian. All of us, at some point, will be called upon to embrace difficulties and trials. Some longer than others, and to a greater degree than others. But endurance will be necessary for every believer, endurance that is vulnerably transparent, humbly honest, and longingly hopeful.
It is to this end that we turn to the Psalms, specifically the Psalms of Lament. These songs of the Hebrews, written in times of deep despair and distress, are human cries to God in the middle of suffering and struggle. Without a doubt each “complainer” is seeking God’s deliverance, whether individually or collectively; but the apparent delay of divine action puts each lamenter into a vice grip of sorts, squeezing them to verbalize their frustration with what they are going through mixed with their faith in who they are mourning to.
In the end, confidence emerges, but it’s not a shallow, blind confidence. It’s a tested confidence; a refined-by-fire faith that knows what it means to truly hope with deep and often sorrowful longings, not simply wish with wide-eyed, fix-it-in-the-moment, Jeanie-in-a-bottle fancies.